spn fic; this is none of the things I am supposed to be working on
This came about because I mowed the lawn on Saturday and started thinking about green, growing things. Sixteen pages later, here it is.
I haven't posted fic in a long time, have I? Huh. I should start finishing stuff.
Title: Now They've Come To Cut You Down
Fandom: Supernatural
Word Count: 5700
Disclaimer: Blame Eric Kripke. They're not mine.
Summary: In which Sam is reborn as a tree, maybe.
Notes: Non-canon-compliant after S2. I thought this was going to be silly crack!fic until I figured out how it had to end. This is not a happy story. Title & cut text from The King of Trees by Cat Stevens.
____
Grey ribbon of asphalt snaking up the western edge of Missouri, of Iowa, rain-dark from earlier and sparsely populated with trucks. There's not much to see out here.
The broad sky is grey and oppressive. It's autumn; the grass along the shoulders is dead and the trees are almost bare.
There is no colour anywhere. Everything is grey.
A car heads north. The passenger seat holds a long crumpled figure, asleep. The driver is folded and slumped, his coffee long gone cold. Behind the clouds, the sun is setting; the grey darkens.
Everything is grey, except where it's black.
____
Sam wakes up thrashing about thirty miles south of Sioux City.
Dean keeps an eye on the road and an eye on his brother, automatically reaching out a steadying hand. After a moment, Sam calms.
"Clowns or midgets?" Dean asks, both hands back on the wheel.
"You," Sam rasps. He rummages around in the footwell and comes up with a water bottle. "On the ceiling." He uncaps it and takes a long drink.
Dean blinks. "That's a new one."
"No." Sam puts the bottle away. "It's not."
Dean glances over at Sam, who looks straight back at him. He looks back at the road. "Huh."
There's quiet for a moment, just the rumble of the engine and the hum of tires on asphalt.
"You should think about it, Dean. What I said earlier."
"Not happening, Sammy."
"Look," says Sam, "I just think maybe we should consider other options. Maybe they can reverse the deal if-"
"We've been over this." Dean reaches over to turn up the music. Sam turns it back down.
"And you didn't listen to me then, either."
"That's because you're talking like a crazy person." He flicks a glare over to the passenger seat. "I made my decision, all right? I'll live with it. Or, you know." He shrugs one shoulder. "Not."
Sam fidgets with his hair, sighing heavily. "We should finish this conversation later. I don't want to end up punching you in the face while you're driving."
"You little..." Dean pulls over abruptly and kills the engine, darkness and silence descending immediately. The highway is deserted and in the overcast night there is no moonlight. Dean takes a breath.
"You want to start something, bitch, we're doing it now."
Sam slumps against the door, just a shape, a shade. "I don't want to fight you, Dean."
"No? Then explain."
The shadow that is his brother slides down a little further. "I don't - Dean, I get it, okay? I get why you brought me back." There's a hitch in his voice and if there were any light Dean would call this off so fast, but they can't see each other so it's allowed, maybe. "But how am I supposed to - I can't do it, Dean. You didn't know it was coming and I don't know if that's better or worse, but I'm looking at this thing from six months out and I'm telling you I can't do it."
"And you think I can?" That can't be his voice, nothing but bone fragments and ash.
"I didn't say that." The darkness across the car shifts, Sam rubbing his hands over his face. Dean doesn't have to see it to know. "I just need to say one thing, Dean. Please, just for a minute, for once, will you listen to me?"
For once. As if he hasn't been tuned to his brother like a radio since the day the kid was born.
A passing car illuminates Sam's pleading face for a moment. Dean imagines briefly what it's like behind that expression, sitting in the dark making that face for someone who can't even see it.
The car falls into darkness again. Dean still does not speak.
Sam takes silence for agreement. "I don't... remember anything from when I was dead. I could have gone to Hell. I could have gone to Heaven. I don't know. But, Dean. Your deal? Definitely puts you in Hell. So just think about this." Sam sits forward, pinning Dean with his invisible gaze. "Either you live without me, here, where you still have Bobby and Ellen and Jo and a job to do... or you end up dead, without me, in Hell."
He's not going to say watching you die was Hell or living without you would have been Hell, because he can listen, but he'll be damned all over again if he's going to sap any more masculinity out of this conversation.
"And don't try and tell me Hell can't be worse," Sam forges on, like his freaky mind powers have suddenly morphed into telepathy and who says they haven't, anyway? But Sam doesn't react to that thought, so maybe not. "Because it's not like you'll have me with you down there. Plus, it's Hell." He shifts until his knee is pressing against Dean's leg, bleeding warmth through the layers of denim.
Dean can't speak, even if he had anything to say. The argument is sound, except for how Dean is hardwired to take the hits for both of them whenever possible.
"I don't want to die," Sam says quietly. "But we can't keep doing this. I always figured if I couldn't save you in time I'd go straight to a crossroads." He laughs. It sounds like choking.
"Sammy, if you try that, I swear to God - " His eyes are burning, his nose prickling with the drain from his tear ducts.
"What?" Sam demands, abruptly angry. "What if I do? Why do you get to sacrifice yourself for me, but I don't get to do the same for you?"
"I'm your big brother, dumbass." It comes out a congested growl. "It's my job."
"I keep trying to tell you that it's not," Sam insists. "What do you think, Dean? Do you think I'm going to just be happy living out the rest of my life when I know you're in Hell because of me? I should be dead right now."
"So should I!" Dean roars, filling the small space unbearably. He dials it down a bit. "So we've both cheated death; why does that matter? There's no way to go back to square one on this, Sammy. You can't just hit the reset button. It's too late. What's done is done."
"Maybe."
Dean leans forward and drops his forehead onto the steering wheel. Why you gotta be so stubborn, Sammy?
Sam nudges him with his knee, just a little extra pressure.
"My argument stands," he says softly. "But I don't want to punch you in the face, just so you know."
Dean straightens up and scrubs a hand down his face.
"Good." He starts up his baby again, headlights coming on startlingly bright. "We should hit Bobby's in another couple hours. Go back to sleep."
____
Bobby doesn't dismiss the idea straight out of the gate, which is a bad sign.
"Nothing but dead ends and stone walls on everything else," he says carefully. Like Dean will be offended if Sammy doesn't get himself damned trying to save his brother's sorry hide.
Sam brings it up over beer on the porch in the evening.
"I'm trusting you not to let me end up a vengeful ghost, Dean," he says.
"Yeah, because I'm not letting you end up dead."
"What if I die after you and there's no one around to cremate me?" Sam points out.
Dean has no answer.
"Maybe I'll be reborn as, like, a rock or something," Sam muses.
"Maybe you'll be reborn as a yeti," Dean mutters, then nearly chokes on his next gulp of beer. He stands and points a finger at Sam. "Reincarnation's bullshit and you're not dying." He finishes his beer in one long pull and goes inside.
Sam stays out on the porch.
____
It takes two weeks.
Dean hurls himself out of bed in the middle of the night and barely makes it down the hall to the bathroom in time to keep from vomiting on the floor. The next morning he rousts Sam roughly out of bed and manhandles him into a hug while he's still half-asleep.
"They might not take it back," he warns over Sam's shoulder. God, I hope they don't take it back, he thinks, and his eyes squeeze shut without his permission.
He can tell the instant Sam wakes up properly, because the arms around him suddenly tighten and Sam turns his head just slightly.
"Thank you."
____
Always dirt roads. Can't bury anything under pavement.
They stand back to back, complete 360 surveillance. It's always worst before you know where she is.
A stiffening of the spine, and the other turns to see. She is back.
It's always worst once you know where she is.
She kisses them both and stays only long enough to watch the second one fall to his knees. No one is left standing.
It's always worst after she's gone.
____
He staggers under the dead weight of his brother across the eternal ten yards to the car. The door baffles him for a moment; he can't balance the weight over his shoulder with only one arm. Finally he hoists his brother down, carefully, gripped tight to his chest with one arm, propped against the car.
Sam's neck, next to Dean's cheek, is colder than it was only a few minutes ago when he lay on the ground.
Dean gets him into the back seat, automatically careful of his head even though - and he can't see properly, the blurring is making it hard to get the legs clear of the door. It looks so wrong, Sam's body lying there like that. Uncomfortable, only it doesn't matter, because - Dean can't look away.
Then he finds that he has shut the back door and gotten into the driver's seat and started the car. It was the sound of the engine that brought him back, reminded him where he is. He's not going to crash the car with Sam inside. It's just not going to happen. He drives the twenty minutes back to Bobby's in full and awful wakefulness.
Bobby is on the porch.
Dean takes the keys out of the ignition and doesn't get out of the car. For long moments, nobody moves. Then Bobby starts down the steps and Dean throws open the door and almost falls out. He steadies himself on the door and then shuts it carefully.
Bobby stops at the bottom of the steps, looking between Dean and the car. His face is that terrible mix of grief and pity and Dean cannot deal. He turns to the back seat before remembering that that's another thing he can't deal with. Blindly he reaches out for the roof of his car, leaning on the only solid thing in his life right now.
"Let me help you carry him around back," Bobby says.
"Just," says Dean. "Give me a second."
It's more than a second.
"Yeah, okay," says Dean, making himself push away from the car. "You get his feet."
They get him around back. Bobby has built a pyre. They lay him out carefully, gently, so he won't wake up, arranging him on his back with his hands folded, always prayed before bed, Dean never taught him that, and Dean pours salt and kerosene everywhere, look, Sammy, don't the flames look cool?
This is his second pyre. He wasn't supposed to live long enough to light either of them.
Bobby stands with him, upwind, and they watch Sam burn.
_____
Dean doesn't say a word until the bottle's nearly empty. Then, somehow, he can't shut up.
"I just let him, Bobby. I was right there and I let him do it. How could I let-" His throat closes up. Clearly he needs another shot. He takes one. It doesn't even burn anymore. "What kind of brother does that make me, Bobby?"
"A damn good one," says Bobby, much more crisply than he has any right to. Unless he's been letting Dean drink most of the bottle. That seems kind of unusual for Bobby. And sneaky.
"Sneak," Dean says. "What?"
"You let him make his own decision," Bobby says. "You let him be an adult."
"I let him die." That wasn't a sob, probably. It was more of a hiccup, Dean is pretty sure.
Bobby's face blurs in front of him, melting from the tears running down it. Everything is soaked with anguish, drowning in it, until Dean is gasping for air in shuddering heaves and his own face is wet with grief.
_____
Hair of the dog becomes functional alcoholism. He can't hunt like this.
He wants to leave. His way blocked, he tries to insist. He can hunt like this.
Cajoled into one more day, he wakes up in the panic room. Hurling invective and a plastic cup at the door gains him nothing. He remembers in time not to throw the jug of water.
Vagueness leaves with the liquor. He was hoping he imagined it, but his life is never so merciful.
His brother is dead.
He can't hurt like this. Surely he must die from it.
When he finally hears the door unlock and swing open, he is still alive. He uncurls and sits up on the edge of the cot, lacking even the energy to glare.
Pain takes no effort at all. It's everything else that's difficult. He isn't sure he can do anything anymore, but he can do this. He can hurt like this.
_____
It's winter now.
"You could stick around, if you want." Bobby's going for offhanded and casual, but he sucks at it. Probably wants Dean around for Christmas.
Dean wants nothing more than to be far away and very drunk on Christmas.
"Should probably hit the road," he says. "There's that zombie grizzly or whatever it is over in Montana. Get back in the saddle, you know?"
Maybe he sucks at this as much as Bobby, because that soft face is back, the one that says I loved him too and don't carry this alone. The pain belongs to him, though; anybody else tries to take that responsibility, it's not going to go well. After a moment Bobby nods and grips his shoulder.
"Don't be a stranger," he says.
The Impala leaves dark tracks in the snow on the way out.
It's a pale day, cloud cover high and uniformly pearl-coloured, snow lying flat over the fields like paper. He's listening to the radio because it's marginally better than quiet.
The emptiness of the passenger seat is continually startling.
And he's done this before, he used to know how to do this, drive himself all alone out to kill the evil and salt and burn it and then go get shitfaced and laid. Back when - before, he could do this, and there wasn't this screaming empty space in the car and this ragged hole in his chest and this decrease in lung function every time he remembers. It was bad, but it was never this bad. There was never this crushing certainty that some part of him would never be found, never be seen again.
He hunts down the zombie grizzly and kills it with extreme prejudice.
He's never left a fire untended in his life. He comes within an inch of leaving this one.
Burning zombie grizzly smells horrible.
He finds a hunt in Yamhill next. Oregon in winter sucks, and something is eating parts of the schoolchildren, which sucks even worse. He stops for gas on the outskirts of Portland and buys two bottles of water and extra M&Ms without thinking. When he gets back in the car, realises what he's done, he throws the M&Ms against the dash so hard the bag bursts, multicoloured candy scattering like shrapnel.
It's a werewolf. Nothing weird, no tricks. Just the one, a lone, feral, crazed sonofabitch living the stereotype in a cabin in the woods. Silver bullet to the heart, bang, dead. No complications this time. Cut and dried. No more children will die because of him.
He drives out of Yamhill with M&Ms shifting and skidding around the passenger seat and footwell.
He takes down another wendigo in Utah and then books it over to Nevada to dodge the liquor tax. It's almost Christmas.
____
Bobby calls on New Year's Eve.
"How're you doing, son?"
"Got sunshine comin' out my ass." His voice is flat; there's no point trying. "What's up?"
"Nothin'. Just called to, you know." Oh, he knows. "And to let you know that Ellen'd take it as a kindness if you stopped by." Ellen and Jo are based out of somewhere in New Mexico now, little place between two towns he can't pronounce.
"We'll see how things go," Dean says. He's headed south right now, actually, but he probably won't go. He's not sure he could look Ellen in the eye anytime soon, and Jo - well. He probably won't go. "Listen, Bobby, thanks for calling, but I gotta get going, I-"
"Yeah, I get you." Bobby sounds a little muffled, or. Something. "Just, look after yourself, Dean. All right?"
"Yeah." It even sounds like a lie. "'Bye, Bobby." He hangs up his phone and tosses it over to hang out with the M&Ms that still decorate his car like mutant confetti.
It will never be a happy new year. He's glad that Bobby recognises that.
At the next junction, he turns east. There's something causing shipwrecks off the coast of New England, and he might as well go figure out what.
_____
Spring comes fair and shyly green in Pennsylvania.
He has a face like a stone and he brings his darkness with him, black and shining all around him. He tends it carefully, keeping it clean and polished, like new, his personal charge.
When the M&Ms in the passenger seat begin to melt in the warmth of spring sunlight, he cleans them out. A green one rolls out from under the bench a week later. He puts it in the glove compartment with the maps.
He keeps his darkness close to him like armour, like a lover.
Then, through his darkness, a green tree calls to him.
____
One seriously pissed-off spirit took out his transmission yesterday, he doesn't even know how that's possible, so he's stuck in Allentown for like a week until the parts come in.
"Going freaking nuts," Dean mutters. Somewhere along the last few months, he started talking to himself, just to fill all the dead air. It's not like he talked that much when - before. It's just, like. A reminder that he's - there, or something.
Whatever. A man can talk to himself in the street if he wants to.
There's a little green park about three blocks away from his motel. He's been passing it every day, on what a casual observer would call a walk, but which Dean would classify as glorified pacing.
Not having a working car sucks. The road under him is more stable than anywhere he's ever lived, and he feels caged without it. No car means he can't leave. No car reminds him of last time she needed lengthy work, and that's, well, that's just something he's going to skip right over. He's gotten good at skipping over the sources of his pain. He keeps the pain tucked into a back corner, throbbing like the beginning of a migraine, and if he doesn't let anything poke at it then it won't get any worse. He can handle the way it hurts, like this.
He really wants his car fixed.
So he's pacing, hours at a time, long loops through the city, always coming back by way of this park. He's not sure why.
Today, he stops.
There's a line of young elm trees along the park's edge, some five or six yards in from the sidewalk. The one on the end seems a little shorter than the others, but it seems... leafier, somehow. Like it had to cram all the foliage into a smaller area.
Dean shakes his head. What the crap, seriously. Since when does he notice freaking trees?
Since now, apparently. Awesome.
He walks up to it. It looks like a tree. Hesitantly - cursing his hesitation, because seriously, it's a tree - he reaches out to touch it. It feels like a tree. The shaded bark is rough and cool under his palm.
Just a tree.
He goes back to his motel and doesn't sleep.
The next day he stops in front of the elm again. It still looks like a tree. It's slender and just starting to get top-heavy. If foliage was hair, this tree would be totally shaggy.
Seriously, what the crap. It's a tree.
His car's not done yet. He keeps pacing, the next day, and the next, and every time, he stops in front of the tree. He can't figure out why. It's still just a tree.
The day they call to tell him the parts are in, he stops in front of the tree and says, "Okay, listen up, tree. Whatever you got going on, if it's not hurting anybody, I don't care. So knock it off."
The tree rustles in the breeze.
"Yeah, don't even try it," he warns, and walks away.
It's just a tree.
____
He ends up in Pennsylvania again in July, purely coincidentally. There was this thing in New York, and he hates New York, freaking Brooklyn gives him a headache and there's nowhere to park, but it was actually some ritzy uptown lady who'd asked Bobby to come get rid of her poltergeist, only Bobby was tied up, so Dean volunteered over Bobby's cautioning. Dean managed to get rid of the thing himself, coming out with bruised ribs and a fiercely inflamed resurgence of the pain he keeps shoved in the back corner. Some hunts are worse than others. Poltergeists should never be a one-man job, and he couldn't stop himself from wishing with brutal desperation that Sam were there.
He sometimes catches himself wondering if he'll end up in the same final destination as Sam. He sometimes wants to find out so bad that he doesn't quite make a clean dodge or cover his weak spots properly. Yesterday was one of those days, and he's lucky his ribs aren't broken.
It's just sense to go back west by way of Allentown.
Inevitably, he drives past the park. Inexplicably, he stops.
It's not possible that a tree could grow perceptibly in the few months he was gone, but he'll swear it's true. It looks as tall as the rest of the row. Taller. For a minute he just sits in the car and looks at it, watches the sunlight play through the leaves as the heavy breeze tosses the upper branches; transfixed. It's hypnotic, the deep-shaded green, the waving motion.
He makes up his mind to just drive away, because it's just a tree, but he gets out of the car instead and walks up to it.
The tree waves to him.
"Yeah, laugh it up. I'm back." He touches the bark like a greeting, lays his palm flat against the north side of it to feel the roughness. With the touch, the hot ache in the back of his mind recedes a little, cools slightly. Maybe that's the shade.
He leans his forehead against the trunk to see if it helps. The bark is going to leave impressions on his skin and he really doesn't care, because whether it's the temperature differential or something else, it does help. He turns his head, lays his cheek along the tree trunk. It's cool; for a moment it feels smooth, like skin, like the column of a neck that was alive not too long ago. Blindsided, he pushes away.
"Son of a bitch," he gasps. And he remembers, maybe I'll be reincarnated as, like, a rock or something and reincarnation's bullshit and what if. What if it isn't.
He puts a hand back on the tree. It's young, but it's not that young. The rate it seems to have been growing, though... Dean cannot believe he is seriously contemplating this.
"You better not be messing with me," he says quietly.
The tree rustles reassuringly.
Dean drops his head forward, leans his forehead on the trunk again. "Damn it, Sam." He can barely hear himself over the pulse in his ears and the wind in the leaves.
He stays there until the sun sets and then gets a room at the motel three blocks down.
____
If Bobby wonders why Dean is spending so much time out east, he doesn't ask. Not like there aren't evil sons of bitches aplenty to be ganked within a day's drive of Allentown. They try to hide, like they've always done, and Dean figures them out, piece by piece, step by step, like he's always done, and he kills them all and burns them, and it's satisfying and rending all at once. Fire and Dean have always had a complicated relationship.
When he's done, he usually goes back to Allentown. He goes to the park and sits under the tree and talks.
"You shoulda seen it," he says. "Thing was huge, bigger than that one we took down in Red Rock, remember?" He pauses. "Swear it's the truth. But here I am to tell the tale, because I'm awesome."
The next time, he says, "You were right, you know. Can't say 'I told you so,' you bastard. You were right, okay? I'm still alive." He tips his head back and looks up the slim trunk. "So I guess, you know. I forgive you."
Later, he says, "If I come back as something that can't move on its own, I better come back right here." Next morning he blames it on the whiskey, for the benefit of the part of his mind that still cares.
In October, he rents an apartment across from the park. The mechanic who ordered the parts for his car says he isn't hiring, but Dean says, "I'm the guy with the '67 Impala from back in the spring," and then it's a different tune. Luck and Dean have always had a really dysfunctional relationship, but she comes through for him this time.
There's only enough work for a four-day week, usually, but that works out great for hunting. He's confined to smaller or local jobs, but somebody's gotta do those, too.
Every day after supper, if he's in town, he goes over to sit under the tree. Or stand, if the ground's wet or snowy. Sam gets detailed reports on everything, even if it's just a shitty day at the garage with a recalcitrant engine. It's like the emails he used to write in his head when Sam was at Stanford, only those never made it out of his head.
He's pretty sure the neighbours think he's nuts. It doesn't matter.
____
Another winter. The elms in the park are bare.
The town is debilitated by heavy snowfall, but still the park gets daily visits. There is a path trampled between the apartment across the street and the tree on the corner.
For the Christmas season, the trees are strung with coloured lights, and the one on the corner gets solidly mocked. Ice Princess, Snow Queen. Pretty, pretty lights in your pretty, pretty hair. I never knew this about you, Sammy.
On Christmas Eve, a bag of M&Ms scattered about its roots joins the tree's adornments. The decorations won't last, but the memory will do until the tree can clothe itself again.
Another winter almost over. The elms in the park will not be bare for much longer.
____
March goes out like a lion and Dean knows better than to go stand under a tree in a thunderstorm. He doesn't get more than a passing wave all week, and then on Friday he's planned to leave for New Jersey and see if it's really a kelpie behind the drownings in Edison, so that screws over his weekend.
He gets back on Sunday night soaked and exhausted. All he wants to do is take a hot shower and fall into bed, but he crosses the street in the rain and puts a hand on his brother's trunk and just stands there for a few minutes.
"See you tomorrow, Sammy," he says finally.
He goes in bleary in the morning and doesn't notice the signs until he gets home. He stutters to a stop like a tired wind-up toy, eyes caught on RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT and NOTICE OF GROUNDBREAKING. It takes approximately two and a half seconds for that to register properly. He lurches forward.
"No." He reads the whole sign, the small print, gets the name of the contractor, looks it up in the book as soon as he gets home and makes a phone call.
"You can't kill the park."
"Take it downtown." The man sounds bored. "They'll tell you the same thing."
He calls City Hall on his lunch break on Tuesday.
"This project's had approval since last summer," says the woman. "That would have been the time to make your complaints."
"I didn't live here last summer," Dean snarls.
"Sir, I'll ask you to moderate your tone or I'm going to have to hang up."
He takes a deep breath.
"There's gotta be something I can do."
"I'm sorry, sir, there just isn't."
"What about, like." He wracks his brain. "What if I submit a petition?"
"The community is in favour of the project; I doubt you could collect enough signatures to make an impression. Even if you could, the process is already in motion. It's too late to stop anything."
He calls in sick on Wednesday and goes in in person. He asks to speak to the alderman in charge of municipal development and is surprised to be shown in at once. That's all the luck he gets that day, though, because Alderman Cooper tells him exactly the same thing as the woman he talked to on the phone.
Before he's hinted out the door, Dean has one more question.
"When do the trees come down?"
Next week. Monday.
Next week.
Dean calls in sick on Thursday, too.
____
"What do I do, Sammy?" Sunday night, wrung out and no closer to an answer, he's sitting leaning against his brother, heedless of the wet grass. "What am I supposed to do this time?" His eyes are closed. If he looks up, he'll see the branches swaying mournfully above him, leaves whispering like Sammy's trying to match Dean's voice. "I can't stop them. There's nobody to make a deal with this time." Moisture leaks out of the corners of his eyes, warm tracks down his face startling him. "How'm I supposed to save you?"
The tears keep coming, slowly, running down to his neck and seeping into his collar. He's trying not to remember the last time he felt this kind of abject hopelessness. The leaves stir above him, shushing, consoling.
I'm counting on you not to let me end up a vengeful spirit, Dean.
Dean opens his eyes.
"I won't," he promises. "You're moving on if it's the last thing I do for you, Sammy."
Finally, he has his answer.
He calls Bobby. Bobby's not answering, so he leaves a message.
"Listen, Bobby, I could use your help with something. Take your time, it'll keep till you get here, but it's kind of important."
He's got accelerant. Always has kerosene; always has matches.
He hasn't been drinking much lately, but there's a nearly full bottle of Johnny Walker Blue tucked away, so he pulls it out. He can't do this sober.
He gives his car a last caress, down the smooth sleek line of roof to trunk. "Thanks, baby. Bobby'll come look after you in a few days, okay? You'll be all right."
He crosses back over to the park, lugging the big can of kerosene and a box of salt.
Salt first, for purification. He swallows some himself, washing it down gradually with the bottom third of the bottle, taking his time. Just because it has to be done, doesn't mean he's eager. By the time he finishes the bottle, all the hard edges of the evening have softened, and he's okay with it now. He can do it, now.
The setting sun breaks through under the edge of the clouds, lighting the park up golden. Sam seems to glow, his shadow cutting dark across the brilliant grass. Anybody could see what's going on in the park; anybody could come and try to stop him.
He'd like to see anybody try to stop him.
Dean starts pouring kerosene. He goes all down the line of trees, just in case. Maybe all the trees are people and he never knew. He's not taking chances. Nobody's spirit is getting stuck on Dean's watch.
He can't hold his liquor as well as he could a year ago. Things are starting to slide a bit, especially with the kerosene fumes. He splashes on his shoes and jeans as he finishes the row of trees, stares down for a second, then carefully douses the rest of his clothing.
He goes back to Sam.
Things are seriously beginning to wobble sideways, but that's fine, it won't last much longer. He stumbles and catches himself against his brother.
"Okay, Sammy?" He pats at the trunk, clumsy now, uncertain on his feet. "Here we go."
He fishes a couple of matchbooks out of his pocket with great difficulty. He can't see very well anymore and he wonders if he's going blind, too, because that would be a great cap on things, but then he remembers about sunset.
He gets one matchbook open and strikes it on the back of the other, then lights the other from it and tosses them a few feet away. The fire leaps up immediately.
Dean braces himself against his brother and looks up one last time through the glow and the flicker.
Don't the flames look cool, Sammy?
____
Grey ribbon of asphalt winding east across the country. Grey old man driving a grey old truck under a grey sky; it's kind of important and he's not taking his time.
He is too late.
The park is grey now, except where it's black.
____
I haven't posted fic in a long time, have I? Huh. I should start finishing stuff.
Title: Now They've Come To Cut You Down
Fandom: Supernatural
Word Count: 5700
Disclaimer: Blame Eric Kripke. They're not mine.
Summary: In which Sam is reborn as a tree, maybe.
Notes: Non-canon-compliant after S2. I thought this was going to be silly crack!fic until I figured out how it had to end. This is not a happy story. Title & cut text from The King of Trees by Cat Stevens.
____
Grey ribbon of asphalt snaking up the western edge of Missouri, of Iowa, rain-dark from earlier and sparsely populated with trucks. There's not much to see out here.
The broad sky is grey and oppressive. It's autumn; the grass along the shoulders is dead and the trees are almost bare.
There is no colour anywhere. Everything is grey.
A car heads north. The passenger seat holds a long crumpled figure, asleep. The driver is folded and slumped, his coffee long gone cold. Behind the clouds, the sun is setting; the grey darkens.
Everything is grey, except where it's black.
____
Sam wakes up thrashing about thirty miles south of Sioux City.
Dean keeps an eye on the road and an eye on his brother, automatically reaching out a steadying hand. After a moment, Sam calms.
"Clowns or midgets?" Dean asks, both hands back on the wheel.
"You," Sam rasps. He rummages around in the footwell and comes up with a water bottle. "On the ceiling." He uncaps it and takes a long drink.
Dean blinks. "That's a new one."
"No." Sam puts the bottle away. "It's not."
Dean glances over at Sam, who looks straight back at him. He looks back at the road. "Huh."
There's quiet for a moment, just the rumble of the engine and the hum of tires on asphalt.
"You should think about it, Dean. What I said earlier."
"Not happening, Sammy."
"Look," says Sam, "I just think maybe we should consider other options. Maybe they can reverse the deal if-"
"We've been over this." Dean reaches over to turn up the music. Sam turns it back down.
"And you didn't listen to me then, either."
"That's because you're talking like a crazy person." He flicks a glare over to the passenger seat. "I made my decision, all right? I'll live with it. Or, you know." He shrugs one shoulder. "Not."
Sam fidgets with his hair, sighing heavily. "We should finish this conversation later. I don't want to end up punching you in the face while you're driving."
"You little..." Dean pulls over abruptly and kills the engine, darkness and silence descending immediately. The highway is deserted and in the overcast night there is no moonlight. Dean takes a breath.
"You want to start something, bitch, we're doing it now."
Sam slumps against the door, just a shape, a shade. "I don't want to fight you, Dean."
"No? Then explain."
The shadow that is his brother slides down a little further. "I don't - Dean, I get it, okay? I get why you brought me back." There's a hitch in his voice and if there were any light Dean would call this off so fast, but they can't see each other so it's allowed, maybe. "But how am I supposed to - I can't do it, Dean. You didn't know it was coming and I don't know if that's better or worse, but I'm looking at this thing from six months out and I'm telling you I can't do it."
"And you think I can?" That can't be his voice, nothing but bone fragments and ash.
"I didn't say that." The darkness across the car shifts, Sam rubbing his hands over his face. Dean doesn't have to see it to know. "I just need to say one thing, Dean. Please, just for a minute, for once, will you listen to me?"
For once. As if he hasn't been tuned to his brother like a radio since the day the kid was born.
A passing car illuminates Sam's pleading face for a moment. Dean imagines briefly what it's like behind that expression, sitting in the dark making that face for someone who can't even see it.
The car falls into darkness again. Dean still does not speak.
Sam takes silence for agreement. "I don't... remember anything from when I was dead. I could have gone to Hell. I could have gone to Heaven. I don't know. But, Dean. Your deal? Definitely puts you in Hell. So just think about this." Sam sits forward, pinning Dean with his invisible gaze. "Either you live without me, here, where you still have Bobby and Ellen and Jo and a job to do... or you end up dead, without me, in Hell."
He's not going to say watching you die was Hell or living without you would have been Hell, because he can listen, but he'll be damned all over again if he's going to sap any more masculinity out of this conversation.
"And don't try and tell me Hell can't be worse," Sam forges on, like his freaky mind powers have suddenly morphed into telepathy and who says they haven't, anyway? But Sam doesn't react to that thought, so maybe not. "Because it's not like you'll have me with you down there. Plus, it's Hell." He shifts until his knee is pressing against Dean's leg, bleeding warmth through the layers of denim.
Dean can't speak, even if he had anything to say. The argument is sound, except for how Dean is hardwired to take the hits for both of them whenever possible.
"I don't want to die," Sam says quietly. "But we can't keep doing this. I always figured if I couldn't save you in time I'd go straight to a crossroads." He laughs. It sounds like choking.
"Sammy, if you try that, I swear to God - " His eyes are burning, his nose prickling with the drain from his tear ducts.
"What?" Sam demands, abruptly angry. "What if I do? Why do you get to sacrifice yourself for me, but I don't get to do the same for you?"
"I'm your big brother, dumbass." It comes out a congested growl. "It's my job."
"I keep trying to tell you that it's not," Sam insists. "What do you think, Dean? Do you think I'm going to just be happy living out the rest of my life when I know you're in Hell because of me? I should be dead right now."
"So should I!" Dean roars, filling the small space unbearably. He dials it down a bit. "So we've both cheated death; why does that matter? There's no way to go back to square one on this, Sammy. You can't just hit the reset button. It's too late. What's done is done."
"Maybe."
Dean leans forward and drops his forehead onto the steering wheel. Why you gotta be so stubborn, Sammy?
Sam nudges him with his knee, just a little extra pressure.
"My argument stands," he says softly. "But I don't want to punch you in the face, just so you know."
Dean straightens up and scrubs a hand down his face.
"Good." He starts up his baby again, headlights coming on startlingly bright. "We should hit Bobby's in another couple hours. Go back to sleep."
____
Bobby doesn't dismiss the idea straight out of the gate, which is a bad sign.
"Nothing but dead ends and stone walls on everything else," he says carefully. Like Dean will be offended if Sammy doesn't get himself damned trying to save his brother's sorry hide.
Sam brings it up over beer on the porch in the evening.
"I'm trusting you not to let me end up a vengeful ghost, Dean," he says.
"Yeah, because I'm not letting you end up dead."
"What if I die after you and there's no one around to cremate me?" Sam points out.
Dean has no answer.
"Maybe I'll be reborn as, like, a rock or something," Sam muses.
"Maybe you'll be reborn as a yeti," Dean mutters, then nearly chokes on his next gulp of beer. He stands and points a finger at Sam. "Reincarnation's bullshit and you're not dying." He finishes his beer in one long pull and goes inside.
Sam stays out on the porch.
____
It takes two weeks.
Dean hurls himself out of bed in the middle of the night and barely makes it down the hall to the bathroom in time to keep from vomiting on the floor. The next morning he rousts Sam roughly out of bed and manhandles him into a hug while he's still half-asleep.
"They might not take it back," he warns over Sam's shoulder. God, I hope they don't take it back, he thinks, and his eyes squeeze shut without his permission.
He can tell the instant Sam wakes up properly, because the arms around him suddenly tighten and Sam turns his head just slightly.
"Thank you."
____
Always dirt roads. Can't bury anything under pavement.
They stand back to back, complete 360 surveillance. It's always worst before you know where she is.
A stiffening of the spine, and the other turns to see. She is back.
It's always worst once you know where she is.
She kisses them both and stays only long enough to watch the second one fall to his knees. No one is left standing.
It's always worst after she's gone.
____
He staggers under the dead weight of his brother across the eternal ten yards to the car. The door baffles him for a moment; he can't balance the weight over his shoulder with only one arm. Finally he hoists his brother down, carefully, gripped tight to his chest with one arm, propped against the car.
Sam's neck, next to Dean's cheek, is colder than it was only a few minutes ago when he lay on the ground.
Dean gets him into the back seat, automatically careful of his head even though - and he can't see properly, the blurring is making it hard to get the legs clear of the door. It looks so wrong, Sam's body lying there like that. Uncomfortable, only it doesn't matter, because - Dean can't look away.
Then he finds that he has shut the back door and gotten into the driver's seat and started the car. It was the sound of the engine that brought him back, reminded him where he is. He's not going to crash the car with Sam inside. It's just not going to happen. He drives the twenty minutes back to Bobby's in full and awful wakefulness.
Bobby is on the porch.
Dean takes the keys out of the ignition and doesn't get out of the car. For long moments, nobody moves. Then Bobby starts down the steps and Dean throws open the door and almost falls out. He steadies himself on the door and then shuts it carefully.
Bobby stops at the bottom of the steps, looking between Dean and the car. His face is that terrible mix of grief and pity and Dean cannot deal. He turns to the back seat before remembering that that's another thing he can't deal with. Blindly he reaches out for the roof of his car, leaning on the only solid thing in his life right now.
"Let me help you carry him around back," Bobby says.
"Just," says Dean. "Give me a second."
It's more than a second.
"Yeah, okay," says Dean, making himself push away from the car. "You get his feet."
They get him around back. Bobby has built a pyre. They lay him out carefully, gently, so he won't wake up, arranging him on his back with his hands folded, always prayed before bed, Dean never taught him that, and Dean pours salt and kerosene everywhere, look, Sammy, don't the flames look cool?
This is his second pyre. He wasn't supposed to live long enough to light either of them.
Bobby stands with him, upwind, and they watch Sam burn.
_____
Dean doesn't say a word until the bottle's nearly empty. Then, somehow, he can't shut up.
"I just let him, Bobby. I was right there and I let him do it. How could I let-" His throat closes up. Clearly he needs another shot. He takes one. It doesn't even burn anymore. "What kind of brother does that make me, Bobby?"
"A damn good one," says Bobby, much more crisply than he has any right to. Unless he's been letting Dean drink most of the bottle. That seems kind of unusual for Bobby. And sneaky.
"Sneak," Dean says. "What?"
"You let him make his own decision," Bobby says. "You let him be an adult."
"I let him die." That wasn't a sob, probably. It was more of a hiccup, Dean is pretty sure.
Bobby's face blurs in front of him, melting from the tears running down it. Everything is soaked with anguish, drowning in it, until Dean is gasping for air in shuddering heaves and his own face is wet with grief.
_____
Hair of the dog becomes functional alcoholism. He can't hunt like this.
He wants to leave. His way blocked, he tries to insist. He can hunt like this.
Cajoled into one more day, he wakes up in the panic room. Hurling invective and a plastic cup at the door gains him nothing. He remembers in time not to throw the jug of water.
Vagueness leaves with the liquor. He was hoping he imagined it, but his life is never so merciful.
His brother is dead.
He can't hurt like this. Surely he must die from it.
When he finally hears the door unlock and swing open, he is still alive. He uncurls and sits up on the edge of the cot, lacking even the energy to glare.
Pain takes no effort at all. It's everything else that's difficult. He isn't sure he can do anything anymore, but he can do this. He can hurt like this.
_____
It's winter now.
"You could stick around, if you want." Bobby's going for offhanded and casual, but he sucks at it. Probably wants Dean around for Christmas.
Dean wants nothing more than to be far away and very drunk on Christmas.
"Should probably hit the road," he says. "There's that zombie grizzly or whatever it is over in Montana. Get back in the saddle, you know?"
Maybe he sucks at this as much as Bobby, because that soft face is back, the one that says I loved him too and don't carry this alone. The pain belongs to him, though; anybody else tries to take that responsibility, it's not going to go well. After a moment Bobby nods and grips his shoulder.
"Don't be a stranger," he says.
The Impala leaves dark tracks in the snow on the way out.
It's a pale day, cloud cover high and uniformly pearl-coloured, snow lying flat over the fields like paper. He's listening to the radio because it's marginally better than quiet.
The emptiness of the passenger seat is continually startling.
And he's done this before, he used to know how to do this, drive himself all alone out to kill the evil and salt and burn it and then go get shitfaced and laid. Back when - before, he could do this, and there wasn't this screaming empty space in the car and this ragged hole in his chest and this decrease in lung function every time he remembers. It was bad, but it was never this bad. There was never this crushing certainty that some part of him would never be found, never be seen again.
He hunts down the zombie grizzly and kills it with extreme prejudice.
He's never left a fire untended in his life. He comes within an inch of leaving this one.
Burning zombie grizzly smells horrible.
He finds a hunt in Yamhill next. Oregon in winter sucks, and something is eating parts of the schoolchildren, which sucks even worse. He stops for gas on the outskirts of Portland and buys two bottles of water and extra M&Ms without thinking. When he gets back in the car, realises what he's done, he throws the M&Ms against the dash so hard the bag bursts, multicoloured candy scattering like shrapnel.
It's a werewolf. Nothing weird, no tricks. Just the one, a lone, feral, crazed sonofabitch living the stereotype in a cabin in the woods. Silver bullet to the heart, bang, dead. No complications this time. Cut and dried. No more children will die because of him.
He drives out of Yamhill with M&Ms shifting and skidding around the passenger seat and footwell.
He takes down another wendigo in Utah and then books it over to Nevada to dodge the liquor tax. It's almost Christmas.
____
Bobby calls on New Year's Eve.
"How're you doing, son?"
"Got sunshine comin' out my ass." His voice is flat; there's no point trying. "What's up?"
"Nothin'. Just called to, you know." Oh, he knows. "And to let you know that Ellen'd take it as a kindness if you stopped by." Ellen and Jo are based out of somewhere in New Mexico now, little place between two towns he can't pronounce.
"We'll see how things go," Dean says. He's headed south right now, actually, but he probably won't go. He's not sure he could look Ellen in the eye anytime soon, and Jo - well. He probably won't go. "Listen, Bobby, thanks for calling, but I gotta get going, I-"
"Yeah, I get you." Bobby sounds a little muffled, or. Something. "Just, look after yourself, Dean. All right?"
"Yeah." It even sounds like a lie. "'Bye, Bobby." He hangs up his phone and tosses it over to hang out with the M&Ms that still decorate his car like mutant confetti.
It will never be a happy new year. He's glad that Bobby recognises that.
At the next junction, he turns east. There's something causing shipwrecks off the coast of New England, and he might as well go figure out what.
_____
Spring comes fair and shyly green in Pennsylvania.
He has a face like a stone and he brings his darkness with him, black and shining all around him. He tends it carefully, keeping it clean and polished, like new, his personal charge.
When the M&Ms in the passenger seat begin to melt in the warmth of spring sunlight, he cleans them out. A green one rolls out from under the bench a week later. He puts it in the glove compartment with the maps.
He keeps his darkness close to him like armour, like a lover.
Then, through his darkness, a green tree calls to him.
____
One seriously pissed-off spirit took out his transmission yesterday, he doesn't even know how that's possible, so he's stuck in Allentown for like a week until the parts come in.
"Going freaking nuts," Dean mutters. Somewhere along the last few months, he started talking to himself, just to fill all the dead air. It's not like he talked that much when - before. It's just, like. A reminder that he's - there, or something.
Whatever. A man can talk to himself in the street if he wants to.
There's a little green park about three blocks away from his motel. He's been passing it every day, on what a casual observer would call a walk, but which Dean would classify as glorified pacing.
Not having a working car sucks. The road under him is more stable than anywhere he's ever lived, and he feels caged without it. No car means he can't leave. No car reminds him of last time she needed lengthy work, and that's, well, that's just something he's going to skip right over. He's gotten good at skipping over the sources of his pain. He keeps the pain tucked into a back corner, throbbing like the beginning of a migraine, and if he doesn't let anything poke at it then it won't get any worse. He can handle the way it hurts, like this.
He really wants his car fixed.
So he's pacing, hours at a time, long loops through the city, always coming back by way of this park. He's not sure why.
Today, he stops.
There's a line of young elm trees along the park's edge, some five or six yards in from the sidewalk. The one on the end seems a little shorter than the others, but it seems... leafier, somehow. Like it had to cram all the foliage into a smaller area.
Dean shakes his head. What the crap, seriously. Since when does he notice freaking trees?
Since now, apparently. Awesome.
He walks up to it. It looks like a tree. Hesitantly - cursing his hesitation, because seriously, it's a tree - he reaches out to touch it. It feels like a tree. The shaded bark is rough and cool under his palm.
Just a tree.
He goes back to his motel and doesn't sleep.
The next day he stops in front of the elm again. It still looks like a tree. It's slender and just starting to get top-heavy. If foliage was hair, this tree would be totally shaggy.
Seriously, what the crap. It's a tree.
His car's not done yet. He keeps pacing, the next day, and the next, and every time, he stops in front of the tree. He can't figure out why. It's still just a tree.
The day they call to tell him the parts are in, he stops in front of the tree and says, "Okay, listen up, tree. Whatever you got going on, if it's not hurting anybody, I don't care. So knock it off."
The tree rustles in the breeze.
"Yeah, don't even try it," he warns, and walks away.
It's just a tree.
____
He ends up in Pennsylvania again in July, purely coincidentally. There was this thing in New York, and he hates New York, freaking Brooklyn gives him a headache and there's nowhere to park, but it was actually some ritzy uptown lady who'd asked Bobby to come get rid of her poltergeist, only Bobby was tied up, so Dean volunteered over Bobby's cautioning. Dean managed to get rid of the thing himself, coming out with bruised ribs and a fiercely inflamed resurgence of the pain he keeps shoved in the back corner. Some hunts are worse than others. Poltergeists should never be a one-man job, and he couldn't stop himself from wishing with brutal desperation that Sam were there.
He sometimes catches himself wondering if he'll end up in the same final destination as Sam. He sometimes wants to find out so bad that he doesn't quite make a clean dodge or cover his weak spots properly. Yesterday was one of those days, and he's lucky his ribs aren't broken.
It's just sense to go back west by way of Allentown.
Inevitably, he drives past the park. Inexplicably, he stops.
It's not possible that a tree could grow perceptibly in the few months he was gone, but he'll swear it's true. It looks as tall as the rest of the row. Taller. For a minute he just sits in the car and looks at it, watches the sunlight play through the leaves as the heavy breeze tosses the upper branches; transfixed. It's hypnotic, the deep-shaded green, the waving motion.
He makes up his mind to just drive away, because it's just a tree, but he gets out of the car instead and walks up to it.
The tree waves to him.
"Yeah, laugh it up. I'm back." He touches the bark like a greeting, lays his palm flat against the north side of it to feel the roughness. With the touch, the hot ache in the back of his mind recedes a little, cools slightly. Maybe that's the shade.
He leans his forehead against the trunk to see if it helps. The bark is going to leave impressions on his skin and he really doesn't care, because whether it's the temperature differential or something else, it does help. He turns his head, lays his cheek along the tree trunk. It's cool; for a moment it feels smooth, like skin, like the column of a neck that was alive not too long ago. Blindsided, he pushes away.
"Son of a bitch," he gasps. And he remembers, maybe I'll be reincarnated as, like, a rock or something and reincarnation's bullshit and what if. What if it isn't.
He puts a hand back on the tree. It's young, but it's not that young. The rate it seems to have been growing, though... Dean cannot believe he is seriously contemplating this.
"You better not be messing with me," he says quietly.
The tree rustles reassuringly.
Dean drops his head forward, leans his forehead on the trunk again. "Damn it, Sam." He can barely hear himself over the pulse in his ears and the wind in the leaves.
He stays there until the sun sets and then gets a room at the motel three blocks down.
____
If Bobby wonders why Dean is spending so much time out east, he doesn't ask. Not like there aren't evil sons of bitches aplenty to be ganked within a day's drive of Allentown. They try to hide, like they've always done, and Dean figures them out, piece by piece, step by step, like he's always done, and he kills them all and burns them, and it's satisfying and rending all at once. Fire and Dean have always had a complicated relationship.
When he's done, he usually goes back to Allentown. He goes to the park and sits under the tree and talks.
"You shoulda seen it," he says. "Thing was huge, bigger than that one we took down in Red Rock, remember?" He pauses. "Swear it's the truth. But here I am to tell the tale, because I'm awesome."
The next time, he says, "You were right, you know. Can't say 'I told you so,' you bastard. You were right, okay? I'm still alive." He tips his head back and looks up the slim trunk. "So I guess, you know. I forgive you."
Later, he says, "If I come back as something that can't move on its own, I better come back right here." Next morning he blames it on the whiskey, for the benefit of the part of his mind that still cares.
In October, he rents an apartment across from the park. The mechanic who ordered the parts for his car says he isn't hiring, but Dean says, "I'm the guy with the '67 Impala from back in the spring," and then it's a different tune. Luck and Dean have always had a really dysfunctional relationship, but she comes through for him this time.
There's only enough work for a four-day week, usually, but that works out great for hunting. He's confined to smaller or local jobs, but somebody's gotta do those, too.
Every day after supper, if he's in town, he goes over to sit under the tree. Or stand, if the ground's wet or snowy. Sam gets detailed reports on everything, even if it's just a shitty day at the garage with a recalcitrant engine. It's like the emails he used to write in his head when Sam was at Stanford, only those never made it out of his head.
He's pretty sure the neighbours think he's nuts. It doesn't matter.
____
Another winter. The elms in the park are bare.
The town is debilitated by heavy snowfall, but still the park gets daily visits. There is a path trampled between the apartment across the street and the tree on the corner.
For the Christmas season, the trees are strung with coloured lights, and the one on the corner gets solidly mocked. Ice Princess, Snow Queen. Pretty, pretty lights in your pretty, pretty hair. I never knew this about you, Sammy.
On Christmas Eve, a bag of M&Ms scattered about its roots joins the tree's adornments. The decorations won't last, but the memory will do until the tree can clothe itself again.
Another winter almost over. The elms in the park will not be bare for much longer.
____
March goes out like a lion and Dean knows better than to go stand under a tree in a thunderstorm. He doesn't get more than a passing wave all week, and then on Friday he's planned to leave for New Jersey and see if it's really a kelpie behind the drownings in Edison, so that screws over his weekend.
He gets back on Sunday night soaked and exhausted. All he wants to do is take a hot shower and fall into bed, but he crosses the street in the rain and puts a hand on his brother's trunk and just stands there for a few minutes.
"See you tomorrow, Sammy," he says finally.
He goes in bleary in the morning and doesn't notice the signs until he gets home. He stutters to a stop like a tired wind-up toy, eyes caught on RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT and NOTICE OF GROUNDBREAKING. It takes approximately two and a half seconds for that to register properly. He lurches forward.
"No." He reads the whole sign, the small print, gets the name of the contractor, looks it up in the book as soon as he gets home and makes a phone call.
"You can't kill the park."
"Take it downtown." The man sounds bored. "They'll tell you the same thing."
He calls City Hall on his lunch break on Tuesday.
"This project's had approval since last summer," says the woman. "That would have been the time to make your complaints."
"I didn't live here last summer," Dean snarls.
"Sir, I'll ask you to moderate your tone or I'm going to have to hang up."
He takes a deep breath.
"There's gotta be something I can do."
"I'm sorry, sir, there just isn't."
"What about, like." He wracks his brain. "What if I submit a petition?"
"The community is in favour of the project; I doubt you could collect enough signatures to make an impression. Even if you could, the process is already in motion. It's too late to stop anything."
He calls in sick on Wednesday and goes in in person. He asks to speak to the alderman in charge of municipal development and is surprised to be shown in at once. That's all the luck he gets that day, though, because Alderman Cooper tells him exactly the same thing as the woman he talked to on the phone.
Before he's hinted out the door, Dean has one more question.
"When do the trees come down?"
Next week. Monday.
Next week.
Dean calls in sick on Thursday, too.
____
"What do I do, Sammy?" Sunday night, wrung out and no closer to an answer, he's sitting leaning against his brother, heedless of the wet grass. "What am I supposed to do this time?" His eyes are closed. If he looks up, he'll see the branches swaying mournfully above him, leaves whispering like Sammy's trying to match Dean's voice. "I can't stop them. There's nobody to make a deal with this time." Moisture leaks out of the corners of his eyes, warm tracks down his face startling him. "How'm I supposed to save you?"
The tears keep coming, slowly, running down to his neck and seeping into his collar. He's trying not to remember the last time he felt this kind of abject hopelessness. The leaves stir above him, shushing, consoling.
I'm counting on you not to let me end up a vengeful spirit, Dean.
Dean opens his eyes.
"I won't," he promises. "You're moving on if it's the last thing I do for you, Sammy."
Finally, he has his answer.
He calls Bobby. Bobby's not answering, so he leaves a message.
"Listen, Bobby, I could use your help with something. Take your time, it'll keep till you get here, but it's kind of important."
He's got accelerant. Always has kerosene; always has matches.
He hasn't been drinking much lately, but there's a nearly full bottle of Johnny Walker Blue tucked away, so he pulls it out. He can't do this sober.
He gives his car a last caress, down the smooth sleek line of roof to trunk. "Thanks, baby. Bobby'll come look after you in a few days, okay? You'll be all right."
He crosses back over to the park, lugging the big can of kerosene and a box of salt.
Salt first, for purification. He swallows some himself, washing it down gradually with the bottom third of the bottle, taking his time. Just because it has to be done, doesn't mean he's eager. By the time he finishes the bottle, all the hard edges of the evening have softened, and he's okay with it now. He can do it, now.
The setting sun breaks through under the edge of the clouds, lighting the park up golden. Sam seems to glow, his shadow cutting dark across the brilliant grass. Anybody could see what's going on in the park; anybody could come and try to stop him.
He'd like to see anybody try to stop him.
Dean starts pouring kerosene. He goes all down the line of trees, just in case. Maybe all the trees are people and he never knew. He's not taking chances. Nobody's spirit is getting stuck on Dean's watch.
He can't hold his liquor as well as he could a year ago. Things are starting to slide a bit, especially with the kerosene fumes. He splashes on his shoes and jeans as he finishes the row of trees, stares down for a second, then carefully douses the rest of his clothing.
He goes back to Sam.
Things are seriously beginning to wobble sideways, but that's fine, it won't last much longer. He stumbles and catches himself against his brother.
"Okay, Sammy?" He pats at the trunk, clumsy now, uncertain on his feet. "Here we go."
He fishes a couple of matchbooks out of his pocket with great difficulty. He can't see very well anymore and he wonders if he's going blind, too, because that would be a great cap on things, but then he remembers about sunset.
He gets one matchbook open and strikes it on the back of the other, then lights the other from it and tosses them a few feet away. The fire leaps up immediately.
Dean braces himself against his brother and looks up one last time through the glow and the flicker.
Don't the flames look cool, Sammy?
____
Grey ribbon of asphalt winding east across the country. Grey old man driving a grey old truck under a grey sky; it's kind of important and he's not taking his time.
He is too late.
The park is grey now, except where it's black.
____